Stefan Andrus Burr (born 1940) is a
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
. He is a retired professor of Computer Science at
The City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, City ...
.
Burr received his Ph.D. in 1969 from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
under the supervision of
Bernard Dwork; his thesis research involved the
Waring–Goldbach problem The Waring–Goldbach problem is a problem in additive number theory, concerning the representation of integers as sums of powers of prime numbers. It is named as a combination of Waring's problem on sums of powers of integers, and the Goldbach con ...
in
number theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777â ...
, which concerns the representations of integers as sums of powers of
prime number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
s.
[.]
Many of his subsequent publications involve problems from the field of
Ramsey theory. He has published 27 papers with
Paul Erdős
Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...
.
The
Burr–Erdős conjecture In mathematics, the Burr–Erdős conjecture was a problem concerning the Ramsey number of sparse graphs. The conjecture is named after Stefan Burr and Paul Erdős, and is one of many conjectures named after Erdős; it states that the Ramsey nu ...
, published as a conjecture by Burr and Erdős in 1975, solved only in 2015, states that
sparse graphs have
linearly growing Ramsey number
In combinatorics, Ramsey's theorem, in one of its graph-theoretic forms, states that one will find monochromatic cliques in any edge labelling (with colours) of a sufficiently large complete graph. To demonstrate the theorem for two colours (say ...
s.
Selected publications
*
*with
P. Erdõs and
J. H. Spencer:
*with
P. Erdõs,
R. J. Faudree,
C. C. Rousseau
Cecil Clyde Rousseau, Jr. (January 13, 1938 Philadelphia - April 10, 2020 Memphis) was a mathematician and author who specialized in graph theory and combinatorics. He was a professor at The University of Memphis starting in 1970 until retiring in ...
and
R. H. Schelp:
References
Living people
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Combinatorialists
Princeton University faculty
City College of New York faculty
1940 births
Princeton University alumni
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